San Francisco Classical Voice

Some came to praise, some to perform, some to watch and listen. All came Friday evening to the Opera House to pay tribute to Lotfi Mansouri, man of the theater, who retires at the end of this season as general director of the San Francisco Opera. Ultimately, therefore, the tribute was to opera.

Special nonmusical treats at the concert gala in his honor included the appearances of Dame Joan Sutherland in person and Carol Burnett on a giant video screen, both talking fondly about the Lotfi they have known and loved. Lotfi himself made several appearances on the screen, most memorably in a scene from a movie languishing in well-deserved obscurity, which featured an irrepressible young Lotfi lip-synching for Enrico Caruso. He looked as if he were having the time of his life.

But opera was what it was all about — the greatest, perhaps, of all art forms, as Mansouri said, because it is always about the human condition. Fittingly, the most moving of the evening's performers were those who brought their deeply human operatic characters to life, vocally and dramatically.

Two veterans who plumbed the depths of the human soul must be mentioned first. In the duet, "Dal mio cor punita io son" from Donizetti's Anna Bolena, Judith Forst's anguished Giovanna (Jane) Seymour reached a pinnacle of majesty and human utterance that a fresh-voiced Twyla Robinson, singing Anna, can only hope to achieve some day.

James Morris, whose expressive voice seemed almost to disappear at times, was the tortured Dutchman in Wagner's Der fliegende Holländer (The Flying Dutchman). From the moment he appeared at the top of a set of stairs, starkly outlined in silhouette, through his slow descent downstage, his body seemed almost contorted with the agony of his eternal life.

After these two came Renée Fleming, who had jetted from rehearsals at the Met and would be jetted back following intermission, singing first the famous "Depuis le jour" from Charpentier's Louise. She took, and was given by conductor Patrick Summers, all the time in the world to mold the beautiful lines exquisitely. Later she returned to sing "I can smell the sea air" from André Previn's A Streetcar Named Desire, and just before intermission, "Hab mir's gelobt", the final trio from Der Rosenkavalier of Strauss. In this she was joined by an affecting Susan Graham as Octavian and a strangely detached Sophie of Anna Netrebko. The piece seemed out of joint. The gorgeous trio is more than merely gorgeous music. It must be sung, and heard, as the final weaving together of the opera's intricate web of lives and living, and this it was not.

Carol Vaness did double duty as singer and introducer, and certainly won the prize for most costume changes during the evening. In a dramatic black fishtail dress, she sang a duet from Verdi's Il Trovatore with Dmitri Hvorostovsky, whose voice was as tight as Vaness's dress. In "Tu che le vanità'" from Don Carlo, Vaness appeared swathed in gold like a regal Middle Eastern princess, her hair pulled back off her magnificent cheekbones. Her voice was, as earlier, tightly sprung and beautiful. She is a Verdi singer to cherish, even though lines like the arching "s'ancor si piange in cielo/piangi sul mio dolore" ("if they still weep in heaven, weep over my sorrow") lack the true artist's legato that leads achingly, knowingly from note to note.

Finally, in a sweeping red confection, Vaness performed Rossini's "Cat Duet" with Judith Forst, a buffo piece that would undoubtedly be well received in a 19th century drawing room, where it was probably meant to be performed.

Mezzo-soprano Olga Borodina was supremely musical in the warhorse "Mon coeur s'ouvre à ta voix" from Samson et Dalila by Saint-Sa”ns, sinuously wrapping her voice around the lines, infusing her voice with the character of the infamous seductress.

Marcello Giordani sang a heartfelt "E lucevan le stelle" from Puccini's Tosca. Dmitri Hvorostovsky sang an accomplished "Largo al factotum" from Rossini's Il Barbiere di Siviglia. And Anna Netrebko was charming in Lyudmila's Act I aria from Glinka's Ruslan and Lyudmila.

But Ruth Ann Swenson, introduced by Dame Joan, though competently negotiating "Ah, non credea mirarti . . . Ah, non giunge" from Bellini's La Sonnambula, neither inspired nor convinced. And Richard Margison's wide-open, shredded voice barely got him through "Nessun dorma" from Puccini's Turandot.

A wonderful finale, "Opera is . . ." by Elaine and Norman Campbell, gave the superb Adler Fellows of the Opera Center together with the admirable San Francisco Opera Chorus, a chance to cut loose and display, if briefly, some lovely vocal equipment and operatic high jinx. You can do anything onstage as long as you sing it, was their message. In a rollicking conclusion, a Lotfi Mansouri lookalike, Matthew Lord, tenor, was joined onstage by the real thing, who then thanked everyone who had anything to do with San Francisco Opera for making opera possible.

(Stephanie Friedman, mezzo-soprano, has performed in this country and abroad, in opera and recital. She teaches singing at U.C. Davis and Holy Names College.)

©2000 Stephanie Friedman, all rights reserved